Savantis Ltd - Lastest News

Amazon S3 in AWS Management Console Demo

Savantis Team — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 10:05:57 GMT

Amazon announce that the AWS Management Console now provides a simple and intuitive web interface for managing your Amazon S3 resources.

Webinar available here

Second beta release of Rails 3.0 available

Savantis Team — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 10:52:57 GMT

Within the last 48 hours the second beta release of Rails 3.0 has become available.

Go to http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/ for more info on this and news on all things Rails.

Symbian switching to Open Source

Savantis Team — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 10:49:02 GMT

'The group behind the world's most popular smartphone operating system - Symbian - is giving away "billions of dollars" worth of code for free'

'The Symbian Foundation's announced that it would make its code open source in 2008 and has now completed the move.' More here

PCG RLM Thursday 25 March 2010

Savantis Team — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 11:19:29 GMT

Things are shaping up for a local PCG meeting in Newcastle Upon Tyne

For freelances and micro companies in the North East. Location to be confirmed, but will be central Newcastle. Presentations to be finalised. Early contenders are : (1) On-line marketing - a personal experience with Google and Twitter, (2) Growing a company - moving on from being a freelancer and (3) Advice on Tax and company formation for freelancers.

This meeting will provide an opportunity to meet fellow PCG members and freelancers/businesses with similar issues. Open to non PCG members. To express an interest contact andyoverton@savantis.co.uk.

Up and coming Open Cloud Discussion

Savantis Team — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 06:36:21 GMT

From Red Hat : To advance the development of open source cloud computing Red Hat is pleased to present its second Open Source Cloud Computing Forum on February 10, 2010, hosted by Red Hat CTO Brian Stevens.

"Interest in cloud computing has been growing rapidly over the past year, with many enterprises looking to deploy cloud solutions that will enable them to reduce costs and increase their operational flexibility.

For many enterprises, cloud computing is becoming a reality in their IT infrastructures today. The technologies used by today's cloud environments, public and private, have been heavily based on open source software..."

23rd November 2009 - National Freelancers Day

Savantis Team — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:15:14 GMT

In a drive to gain wider recognition for the contribution that freelancers, consultants and contractors make to the UK economy, PCG (the association representing the UK’s freelancers) has declared 23rd November as National Freelancers Day (NFD). As part of NFD there is an event taking place in Newcastle Upon Tyne and a webcast...

Join us in Newcastle Upon Tyne on the day : register here

Follow the NFD tweets

Celebrate National Freelancers Day in Newcastle

County Hotel by Thistle, Newcastle, 23rd November from 6.30pm

Be part of and show your support for National Freelancers Day by joining fellow freelance consultants, interim managers and contractors at a special National Freelancers Day event at the County Hotel by Thistle.

To evolve the themes of the day, PCG is hosting a panel led discussion with each panel member providing their own unique insight and questions. The evening will primarily take the format of a group discussion, with questions to the panel and views being raised by the freelancers and contractors present. You are welcome to be as involved as you want in the discussions, or just listen if you prefer.

This event will let you contribute to and build on activities of the day and explore subjects such as:

What does freelancing mean for you?
What support systems are in place for freelance businesses?
How freelance businesses can evolve, develop and "raise their game"?
The opportunities and challenges for freelance businesses in the current economic climate and beyond?
Why freelancing is vital to the UK economy and the potential for freelancing in the evolving business world?
How businesses could better harness the UK freelance talent pool.

The panel will include:

Andy Overton, Local PCG Member and organiser of Newcastle RLMs

Michael Harle, SJD Accountancy - SJD Accountancy is a national firm of accountants specialising in the provision of accountancy and taxation services to Contractors, Freelancers and Consultants. With over 10,000 clients SJD are the only specialist firm to have offices to cover the whole of the UK.
Paul Callaghan, Chairman of The Leighton Group, the North East based technology, software, media and communications group. Paul is also Chairman of the University of Sunderland and Deputy Chairman of ONE North East. He has an Economics degree from the LSE, an MA in Management and Education and an MSc in Finance and Economics.
Max Seargeant, Engineering Consultant. Max is a chartered Instrumentation & Control Engineer. After having been made redundant in 1993 from his first post graduate job, he decided to go limited company contract. He typically takes "open-ended" secondment type contracts through agents, but has worked directly for both main contractors and end-clients (UK, Ireland and Libya).

The format of the evening is as follows:

6.30 pm                                Meet in the bar
7.00 pm                                Welcome and introductions
7.05 pm                                Panel Discussion
8.00 pm                                Conclusions and actions to take forward
8.15 pm                                End (light refreshment provided followed by more networking in the bar)

The PCG would like to thank:

Savantis for their support in organising this event and SJD Accountancy for their kind contribution towards catering costs

Rails scales well with the right stack

Savantis Team — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:09:17 GMT

A 10 million requests a day Ruby on Rails website is a reality with the right stack.

Looks like the Amazon cloud is ready for some serious Rails website performance. See this RailsInside article.

Ruby on the rise

Savantis Team — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 07:40:14 GMT

Ruby on Rails is entering the mainstream, but is it ready for the enterprise?An interesting article here on the rise of ruby and the readiness of Rails for the enterprise.

Savantis ISO9001 accreditation updated to 2008 version

Savantis Team — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:53:37 GMT

Bureau Veritas, the world's leading certification body, this month audited the Savantis quality management system and '...the level of compliance in this system was found to be very high'.This is not just a box ticking exercise for us. We use our ISO9001:2008 accreditation to measure and demonstrate continual improvement in the service to our customers.

OLIVETTI PR2 PRINTER OCTOBER SALE

Savantis Team — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 07:11:22 GMT

Call us now to secure delivery of your next PR2 printer.New Olivetti PR2 Plus printers from £499.00 each (depending on specification required)
re-conditioned Olivetti PR2 Plus printers £299.00 each, 2 remaining
re-conditioned Olivetti PR2E printers £199.00 each, 2 remaining

Also for consumables...

Genuine Olivetti PR2 printer cartridge for PR2 printers : £2.99 each (£11.99 for box of 5)
2m 9 pin to 9 pin Serial cable for Olivetti PR2 printers : £14.99 each

Offer ends 31st October 2009. Terms and Conditions apply

Business Link actively supporting the use of Open Source

Savantis Team — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 13:50:14 GMT

Check out this link for more information. Open Source Guide. Having 'eaten our own dog food' when it comes to Open Source software we're in a good position to provide advice on it's use and deployment. Call us on +44(0)191 213 1582 to find out more.All our websites and web applications are developed with open source development tools. All applications use powerful high end open source relational databases. All are deployed on the linux open source operating system platform. We use open source project management, CRM and office applications. Web browsers, email clients, backup software and VPN functionality are also provided by open source software. We continually investigate new open source offerings to help improve our productivity and the service we provide to our clients.

Google announce Chrome OS

Savantis Team — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:56:07 GMT

In a direct challenge to Microsoft, Google disclose plans to introduce a new operating system in 2010.And it will be open source - watch out linux distros. Go here to find out more.

Gimme gimme shock tweetment...

Savantis Team — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:37:38 GMT

We're going to be twittering a bit more from now on, so feel free to follow our tweets.Follow our tweets here

OLPC software to power ageing PCs

Savantis Team — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:27:01 GMT

Software originally developed for the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project can now be used on any old PC.Sugar on a stick, as it is known, can be run from a USB drive to give ageing PCs a new interface and access to collaborative educational software. Read more here. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8117064.stm

Open Source Forum on 16th June

Savantis Team — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:45:37 GMT

Redhat are laying on a day of seminars and presentations in London to show how embracing Open Source software solutions can improve the bottom line and maintain productivity."The conference for IT professionals will provide extensive insights on Open Source technologies presented by the users themselves. Whether you are a decision maker or IT engineer, our Business and Technical tracks will suit your needs. You will hear from a variety of enterprises who have successfully deployed Open Source solutions to become more effective and competitive in the market." We'll be there - find out more .

Google Wave - An Open Source replacement for email

Savantis Team — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:08:37 GMT

Google announce the next generation of communication tools."A 'wave' is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more," said Lars Rasmussen, software engineering manager at Google. Find out more .

Pupils 'should study Twitter'

Savantis Team — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:24:57 GMT

Twitter, which has been developed with a big wedge of Ruby on Rails, should be studied by school pupils...Primary school pupils should learn how to blog and use internet sites like Twitter and Wikipedia and spend less time studying history, it is claimed. Read more here.

VMWare provides cloud computing solutions for Ruby on Rails

Savantis Team — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:07:18 GMT

VMware Outlines Cloud Computing Strategy at VMworld Europe 2009.At the recent VMworld® Europe 2009 conference, held in Cannes, France on February 24-26, VMware president and CEO Paul Maritz outlined a comprehensive roadmap for the company’s innovative cloud computing strategy. As noted by Maritz in his keynote, this strategy builds on the proven benefits of VMware virtualization technology and will include the following key components: * VMware vSphere™, the industry’s first virtual datacenter operating system (VDC-OS), which provides the foundation for building internal and external clouds. * VMware vCloud™, an initiative that gives companies the freedom and flexibility to implement “private clouds” through federation between internal and external clouds.

Unlike other cloud computing solutions, the VMware approach will help allows companies to achieve the benefits of cloud computing in an evolutionary way that supports today’s applications, as well as future applications built on next-generation frameworks such as Ruby on Rails.

UK government backs open source

Savantis Team — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:33:38 GMT

The UK government has said it will accelerate the use of open source software in public services.Read more here.

Open source question for schools

Savantis Team — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 16:30:49 GMT

Can open source software help schools use their budgets more efficiently?

Read more here.

Calls for open source government

Savantis Team — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 10:27:18 GMT

The secret to a more secure and cost effective government is through open source technologies and products.

A co-founder of Sun Microsystems reveals he has been asked to prepare a paper on this subject for Barack Obama's new administration. "It's intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software" Read more here.

Rails and Merb to merge for Rails 3

Savantis Team — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 17:09:03 GMT

This announcement was made just before Christmas.

Described as "..a fairly momentous day in the history of Ruby web frameworks." this announcement will raise a few eyebrows in Rails circles as the relationship between the two groups has been strained in the recent past. However, this initiative promises further improvements for Rails on the back of Rails 2.3 due in the new year. Go to here to find out more.

New Savantis website launched

Savantis Team — Sun, 21 Dec 2008 17:44:38 GMT

Hi and welcome to our new website.We've given our website an overhaul and cut out the noise from the old site that, quite frankly, was getting in the way. The team will be blogging on a range of topics from now on and we will be adding to the site as time goes on. Enjoy! (As with all our sites this has been developed in Ruby on Rails, the Web 2.0 framework. Savantis have been developing web applications using Rails since the fall of 2005. Contact us at enquiries@savantis.co.uk or +44(0)1912131582 to find out how we can help you develop your database driven websites and web applications.)

European debut for '$100 laptop'

Savantis Team — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 21:01:52 GMT

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organisation is planning to sell the devices via online store Amazon's European outlets from 17 November. Go to here to find out more.

Ruby on Rails to go

Savantis Team — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:30:43 GMT

Savantis continues to grow its Ruby on Rails expertise. We've been cutting our teeth on some serious Ruby code recently. add to our near 3 years experience using this gem of a language. So to make your Web 2.0 application a reality contact us. We specialise in Ruby on Rails and can offer a full bespoke service from requirements gathering through to customised virtual test environments and complex web application deployment on our dedicated data centre server platform.